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July 29th, 2012 
FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda
Ross himself said, “I can give substantive advice to the administration, the
president’s campaign, or any campaign that would ask for it. And, of course,
when I speak I can talk about my views on policy and I have been supportive
of the president’s policy on leading foreign-policy issues.”
That’s a departure from Ross’s hands-on work with the Obama administration
over the past four years.
In 2008, Obama had a big problem in the Democratic primaries. Prospective
Jewish voters were being inundated with anonymous emails warning that
Obama’s affiliations with Palestinian activists portended disaster for
Israel. Locked in a tight contest with Hillary Clinton, the future president
couldn’t afford to lose the constituency in the primary—and later in the
general election, especially in the swing state of Florida.
Ross was a powerful asset for the campaign. He went to synagogues in swing
states and participated in conference calls to tell Jewish voters that he
was supporting Obama over Clinton’s first lady. He continued his work with
the campaign during the general election, which Obama won with between 74
and 78 percent of the Jewish vote. (Democrats typically get at least 70
percent of the Jewish vote in presidential elections. The best any
Republican has ever done with the Jewish vote was Ronald Reagan, who won 40
percent in 1980.)
This year, Obama is again mired in similar territory, but now he won’t have
the benefit of Ross koshering his record with pro-Israel voters. Despite
unprecedented levels of military cooperation with Israel, the president is
being attacked by the right for a rocky relationship with Israeli Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whom he has pressured to stop settlement
construction in the West Bank and housing construction in East Jerusalem.
And instead of anonymous emails, Obama’s record on Israel is being attacked
on the Web and in television ads paid for by unregulated and at times
anonymous independent expenditures financed by big-money donors like casino
mogul Sheldon Adelson.
Once he joined the Obama White House, Ross was known to be a critic of some of
the administration’s policies. In 2009 and 2010, Ross disagreed with the
foreign-policy team’s strategy to distance the president from Israel in
order for the United States to have more credibility in the peace process. In
an interview this month with The Washington Post, Ross said he thought
Obama’s initial push for Israel to freeze settlement activity in the West
Bank and East Jerusalem as a condition for Palestinians to participate in
peace talks was a mistake.
Ross’s views were well-known to the pro-Israel lobby in Washington, and he was
often trotted out to relieve concerns the Jewish and pro-Israel community
had with Obama’s initial approach to the Jewish state. Others, however,
speculated that Ross was frustrated that the policies he pursued under Obama
have not yet gotten results.
“Dennis is about doing things,” said Aaron Miller, who was Ross’s deputy on
the peace process during the Clinton years and is now a scholar at the
Wilson Center, a public-policy think tank in Washington, D.C. “The peace
process is stuck and is likely to remain stuck. The fact is no amount of
hand-holding is going to assuage the concerns and suspicions of a pro-Israel
community which has now seen some of its fears realized. It may well be that
this is the other piece of this. I wouldn’t want to try to sell Obama to the
Jewish community in this environment.”
Alan Solow, a national co-chairman of the Obama campaign who often accompanied
Ross on talks with synagogues and other Jewish groups, said Ross was still a
supporter of the president.
“Dennis left the administration for the reason he stated—a promise to his
wife—and not because of any disagreement with the president,” Solow said.
“He was an important contributor to many of the president’s policies
regarding Iran and the Middle East and I have every reason to believe that
he continues to support the path being pursued by the president.”
For now, the Obama campaign is continuing its outreach to Jewish voters
without Ross. An Obama campaign official told The Daily Beast it often uses Debbie
Wasserman Schultz, chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee, and
former Florida congressman Robert Wexler as surrogates with Jewish voters.
The White House also conducts its own Jewish outreach with senior
Obama-administration officials like Jack Lew, the president’s chief of
staff. This week, Bloomberg
first reported that Haim Saban, an American television producer and
billionaire, had donated to the pro-Obama super PAC Priorities USA Action.
Saban publicly criticized Obama in 2011 for airing out disagreements with
Israel in public.
A
Gallup poll released Friday showed registered Jewish voters favoured
Obama to Romney 68 to 25 percent.
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